The December 1 Google Doodle honors Jerry Lawson on his 82nd birthday. This engineer and entrepreneur created the technology that paved the way for the modern game.
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The December 1 Google Doodle honors Jerry Lawson on his 82nd birthday. This engineer and entrepreneur created the technology that paved the way for the modern game.
Google/Screenshot of NPR
Anyone who goes online on Thursday (and you included, if you’re reading this) can visit the Google homepage for a special bonus: A set of video games created by the government. You created inspired by the man who helped create interactive games.
Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, who died in 2011, will turn 82 on December 1. He led the team that developed the first home video game system with interchangeable cartridges, paved the way for future consoles like the Atari and Super Nintendo.
Lawson’s accomplishments are particularly notable because he was one of the very few Black engineers working in the tech industry in the 1970s. However, as his own. kids tell Google“Due to the collapse of the video game market, our father’s story has become a footnote in video game history.”
Recent years have ushered in new efforts to recognize Lawson: He is memorialized at the World Video Game Hall of Fame in New York and the University of Southern California created a Foundation named after him to assist underrepresented students who wish to pursue degrees in game design and computer science.
Thursday’s Google Doodle is another attempt. It features games designed by three guest artists, all of whom are people of color: Lauren Brown, Davionne Gooden, and Momo Pixel.
The user first begins by directing the animated Lawson through a path marked by milestones in his own life, and from there they can choose more games to play. Each game has its own aesthetic, purpose, and set of editable features — so everyone can build their own, conveying the spirit of innovation that Lawson embodies.
Users can click the pencil icon to edit the game before playing.
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Users can click the pencil icon to edit the game before playing.
Google/Screenshot of NPR
in one Google videos Explaining Doodle, Anderson Lawson said he hopes young people will be inspired by the games and the people behind them.
“As people play this Doodle, I hope they get inspired to be imaginative,” he said. “And I hope that some kid somewhere that looks like me and wants to get involved in the game’s development, hearing about my father’s story will make them feel like they can.”
Lawson is an inspiration in the field and for his family
Gerald Lawson’s life was “all about science,” as his son put it. He tinkered with electronics at an early age and built his own radio station — using recycled materials — from his room in Jamaica, Queens.
After attending Queens College and City College of New York, Lawson drove cross-country to Palo Alto, where he joined Fairchild Semiconductor — starting as a technical consultant and progressing to the Technical and marketing director for the company’s video game division.
Lawson helped lead the development of the Fairchild Channel F system, the first video game system console to use interchangeable game cartridges, eight-way digital joysticks, and clipboard menus. stop. It was released in 1976.
“He was creating a coin-operated video game using the Fairchild microprocessor, which later together with a group of people led to the creation of the game box and F . channel system“, Anderson Lawson said. The “F” stands for “Fun.”
Catherine Lawson (left) and her daughter Karen Lawson (right) hold a photo of Jerry Lawson in San Jose, Calif. in 2020.
Liz Hafalia / The Chronicles of San Francisco via Getty Images
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Liz Hafalia / The Chronicles of San Francisco via Getty Images
Catherine Lawson (left) and her daughter Karen Lawson (right) hold a photo of Jerry Lawson in San Jose, Calif. in 2020.
Liz Hafalia / The Chronicles of San Francisco via Getty Images
In 1980, Lawson founded his own company, VideoSoft, one of the first black-owned video game development companies. It created the software for the Atari 2600, which popularized the interchangeable cartridge system that Lawson’s Fairchild team had created.
He continued to consult for engineering and video game companies until his death at the age of 70.
And while Lawson may be known as the father of video game tapes, his children also remember him as a father who nurtured and inspired them.
In a year 2021 conversation with StoryCorpsKaren and Anderson Lawson recount that some of their earliest memories are of playing games designed by their father’s team — joking that they later realized he was assigning them experimental work and error.
“If everyone goes to the right, he will find a good reason to go left,” Anderson said. “That’s just him. He made his own destiny.”
And now Google Doodle players can create their own fates — or at least games — in his honor.
